Custom Built (Fast & Fury #1) - Chantal Fernando Page 0,82
away but she still hasn’t noticed my presence. She’s clearly deafened by the music coming through her ear buds and too focussed on her damned knitting.
Next time she requests my services I vow that I’ll be busy. She’s just too much trouble. And too much temptation.
Give me strength...
My temperature spikes, beads of sweat forming on my brow. In my line of work, I often meet Brooke Madden’s type. Privileged, wealthy women who possess endless power but are naïve to the dangers in the world outside their own sphere. But I know those dangers. I’ve been a part of that darkness. The daily battle for order, control and emotional distance is the price I pay for carrying a piece of it inside me.
I glance down. Whatever it is she’s knitting looks fit for the bin. I’ve never wielded a knitting needle, but even I can see the many holes studding the pale blue knitted rectangle.
‘Bloody hell,’ she mutters, withdrawing one needle from the stitch she’s just worked with frustration and pulling off half a row of stitches in the process. Her shoulders slump. She stares at her handiwork as if the dropped loops of wool will miraculously jump back into place of their own accord.
I’m half-tempted to learn to knit myself, just so I can fix her knitting disasters along with her security and travel logistics. Yeah, right...
No, my role here is simple: protect her and ignore all...this.
‘What is it meant to be?’ I ask, tired of waiting for her to notice my not insignificant—some would say intimidating—presence.
She gasps, one hand flying to the valley between her perky breasts. ‘Oh, you made me jump... Hi.’
A tiny frown forms between her perfectly arched brows as she tugs the ear buds from her ears. Her cheeks darken, the colour sliding down that elegant neck of hers, and probably further, to the tops of her incredible breasts. Not that I look. Indulging my stare by dipping that far is strictly off-limits.
I’m so practised at curbing my desires that I’ve committed every tiny intricacy of her bright blue eyes to memory. I linger there now as I fight the irritation simmering in my blood that she ignored my express instructions.
She holds up the knitting, waving it in my direction as if I’ll miraculously be able to decipher its final destiny. ‘It’s a cardigan, for my baby nephew. Clearly it’s a work in progress.’ She observes the disaster of holes and tangled wool, her full mouth a little down-turned.
I swallow my rush of amused affection, press my lips together and fight the indulgent smile that has no place in my relationship with this woman.
‘Why don’t you just buy something?’ I don’t arse-kiss my famous clients. But she’s a conundrum. And, the more I get to know her, the greater the temptation. She has an international modelling career. She’s an obscenely successful businesswoman. A household name. She could buy a cashmere version of whatever tiny, delicate garment she’s knitting a million times over, but clearly she’s determined to master the skill and spread the home-made love to all her friends and family.
She nods, a grin of delight dancing on her lips. ‘I should. You know, I like that about you, Nick. You don’t fawn like most people. You give it to me straight.’ She fidgets with the knitting, wrapping the loose wool around the needles and stuffing it inside her knitting bag, which is emblazoned with the caption Knitting is my Superpower.
‘So, what’s up, Big Guy?’ Her wide-eyed innocence is a little act she puts on every time we have a conversation like the one about to go down.
It’s almost as if she deliberately tests me with her nicknames, her teasing and her playful personality. Hoping to rile me up enough that I’ll flirt back. But my riled-up days are long gone. I’m no longer the reckless young man who once used his intimidating size to earn the respect I mistakenly thought mattered.
‘Oh dear, not that face...’ She smiles, resting back against the pillow and stretching out those endless million-pound legs.
‘What face?’
She likes to believe she knows what I’m thinking, but if she could read my mind she’d probably fire my depraved arse.
‘The one you do when you’re trying to be formidable. I’m immune to it, by the way, but I know it works on other people.’
‘So why do you keep hiring me?’ I’m not her only security, and it’s been hard enough up until now doing the local, one off events. I’ve started to dread the